This is it: the privilege
which lurks in the
margins of blind formality,
the slavish, but the easy
habits of morning—
yanking tight the same
manila shoe laces,
walking the dog
and picking up
her shit, smoking charily
by rented open windows,
boiling water
for more tea and the
eggs about to expire, and small-
talking your way through
the big proposal—
This is your life's
perfect, incognizant
self-writing poem;
blurry on the surface
and superficially metaphoric,
but underneath, really
quite specific—
over time, less like
a rainbow, and more like
all its composite
rain drops,
less like a momentary
spike in adrenaline,
and more like
the inane itch
of some days-old fury slowly
scabbing over.
This is the freest kind
of mechanism
you can hope for:
to be handcuffed
by so much repetition,
but turned-
on—by all the patterns.
